Natural gas fueling plans may spur vehicle growth

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The United States has record supplies of natural gas and plenty of reasons to promote natural-gas powered cars, but consumers, manufacturers and fuel suppliers haven’t shown much interest.

Now, a major natural gas developer’s plans to vastly increase the number of truck stops that offer liquid natural gas could help boost its use in the vehicles that burn the most fuel, while promoting its availability to a wider market.

Lots of natural gas is available, if U.S. drivers decide to use it. In just a few years, domestic natural gas supplies have increased by trillions of cubic feet through shale finds, boosting the supply to the point where plans are in place to export part of the overflow.

The growth of natural gas vehicles in the United States so far has been dominated by fleets of buses, taxis, and garbage haulers. Only one natural gas car is commercially produced in the country: the Honda Civic GX, recently renamed the NG. It has sold a grand total of about 13,000 in 13 years of production.

The reasons for the lackluster sales of natural gas cars are many: the fuel is only available at a handful of public stations, tethering the vehicles within a certain distance of a fuel source. And even though the pump price of natural gas can run $1 to $2 less per gallon equivalent than gasoline, natural gas vehicles carry a higher sticker price.

The focus for the natural gas vehicle industry in the United States has been the fuel-guzzlers: commercial vehicles, especially tractor-trailer rigs.

Rich Kolodziej, president of the trade association NGV America, says that makes sense in terms of overall fuel usage. He said a driver who puts 12,000 miles a year on a car at 25 miles to the gallon will use about 500 gallons of gasoline annually. But a diesel-driven 18-wheeler can easily go 120,000 miles a year. At six miles per gallon, that comes to 20,000 gallons.

“If you’re trying to reduce foreign imports of oil, you’re trying to reduce greenhouse gases and emissions in urban areas, where do you put your effort? You put it on the big vehicles,” Kolodziej said.

For reasons of tank space, liquid natural gas is used by commercial trucks, while compressed natural gas is the fuel of choice for cars.

According to the international trade association NGV Global, there are 12.7 million natural gas vehicles in the world, including 6.8 million in the Asia-Pacific rim, 4.2 million in Latin America, 1.4 million in Europe, and 122,000 in Africa.

The U.S. has just 112,000 of them — less than 1 percent of the global total, and less than a tenth of 1 percent of the 253.7 million vehicles in the U.S.

Most of them are in fleets.

“The big reason that they work well for fleets and not the average person on the street is that most fleet vehicles are used for relatively short trips,” said John O’Dell, senior editor of Edmunds.com, which follows the vehicle industry. “They go back to the barn in the evening where they have a refueling station that can handle them.

“There is not a really good fueling system in this country,” O’Dell added. “You have to have the infrastructure out there to convince people to buy natural gas cars.”

Kolodziej said that there are about 180,000 gasoline stations — and only about 1,000 locations to fill up with natural gas.